I realize that I am one out of millions when I say how much influence the original Star Trek series had on my life when it premiered in 1966. I was four years old then, had an older brother of seven and we were hopelessly addicted to the adventures of the USS Enterprise and her crew. When Star Trek conventions started popping up in New Orleans in the very early 1970s, I even put together a “Gorn” costume (the lizard creature from the episode “Arena”) and won an honorable mention. When Star Trek disappeared from television, it was a bit shocking for us young fans, and it would be a few years before it reappeared in syndication, at least in New Orleans. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened, I was in High School. Already tainted by the adventures of Luke Skywalker and pals in Star Wars, I was a bit less enthusiastic by this big screen effort. However, when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in college a few years later, I knew that Star Trek was back on track! I was a fan again. Getting the call from make-up effects artist Richard Snell was one of the early highlights of my career. I had worked with the bay-area artist on House but our paths had diverged since. I knew that the Star Trek IV job was “floating” around Hollywood because I had done some bid sketches for James Cummins who was also pursuing the project. [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Star Trek is a television and film franchise that has often been thought of as being very forward thinking. Seeing as it centers on a science fiction heavy presentation of our future, I would say that’s a good thing. With the original series, creator Gene Rodenberry broke through a lot of societal boundaries. His future was a multi-cultural, multi-national one that must have seemed very progressive in 1966. The show’s character Uhura was one of the first regular black characters on any series. It showed Americans working side by side with Russians back when communism was still being portrayed as an evil red threat in everything else. But one thing that the franchise has never depicted, even in all of its TV and film spin-offs, is homosexuality. That’s got to be seen as a pretty big failure when looking at things in terms of hard sc-fi. When talking to gay-slanted pop culture site afterelton.com, The Next Generation c0-producer Brannon Braga had this to say about the subject, “It was a shame for a lot of us that … I’m talking about the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and there was a constant back and forth about well how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made not to do that and I think those same people would make a different [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

If you were concerned about Zachary Quinto claiming to quit all things Star Trek, you can let out that breath you’ve been holding.

Zachary Quinto is Spock. You know that already. Now you will know what he looks like with pointy ears…